WomenNC’s mission is to lead North Carolina’s young adults in the elimination of injustice against women and girls. Our vision is to raise a generation that will honor women’s human rights. This blog follows the experiences of our talented fellows. Enjoy reading about their journeys!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Dina Shehata_Blog 12

Presentation Day!

Today was the day of our presentations and it's been such a crazy day, in a good way! We spent the morning relaxing and finalizing everything for our presentations and had lunch at an amazing pizza place. No pizza competes with New York pizza! We had some technical difficulties with our presentations because the microphone was not working properly but we got through it and everyone did such an amazing job! I have to say that I am relieved now that our presentations are over because I have definitely been nervous.

I want to say that all of the fellows did such an awesome job and I am proud of all the hard work and effort that everyone put into their presentations from the very start of the fellowship. We all have very different topics and we do not necessarily agree with each other all of the time but we worked together to represent WomenNC as best as we could!

We went to an event by the Women's Freedom Forum later in the evening that discussed the problems facing women in the Middle East. Their vision is for women to live in a world with dignity, equality, and respect. There were several panelists including a professor named Donna Hughes who made a point that is necessary to make because of the current problems we are facing worldwide. She said the Quran isn't the problem. The incorrect interpretations and assumptions people of all religions make about their own religions create negativity and misunderstandings of those religions as a whole. We need to educate ourselves so as to not penalize entire religions for the actions of a few. During this session, they showed a video of women who had been attacked with acid because they "did not wear their scarves properly." In no way does Islam condone that kind of behavior and it certainly condemns it. For people to take actions such as acid throwing in the name of my own religion is truly an outrage. At the end of the video, one woman had a sign that said "You can destroy my face but never my beliefs." Women are strong and will never stop fighting for the end of these atrocities and for equality.

On another note, I want to move to NYC because I have fallen in love with this place.

We will be heading out to dinner shortly to celebrate a job well done this afternoon!

Dina--well you certainly know how to work through difficult audio visual situations--not part of the experience we want to train on!! Great to hear it went well. I can see how you fell in love with NYC lived outside NYC 12 years and it is limitless as a place to experience, explore.......and the best time is when you are younf--those us middle age types can soak it in too Glad all went well and now you can exhale and just learn and enjoy--well deserved!!